Remember the Red: Reflections on My Father’s Work, by Bork Nerdrum

or a long time, I studied my father’s painting that bears the Latin title: Memorosa, which means, memory of the rose, or, the red.

With my young eyes, I examined the brush strokes and masterful technique.

The composition depicts three life-size figures entering from the left: darkened men lancing a stumbling woman as she reaches out to save a luminous child in the bottom right corner. Above the rock, the moon is aglow, reflecting the light of the sun, which on the opposite side slices weakly across a cloudy sanguine evening light. The intuition led my perception of this work, which I naturally loved. But why? It was skilfully painted and depicted a gripping narrative, but was there something more?

Later, after conversations with my father, I discovered alchemy: a spiritual path that gives one awareness about the nature and its reflections in the elements.

Norwegian figurative painter Odd Nerdrum

In recent years, Odd Nerdrum has been using a two-colored palette after Appelles’ technique, which consists of red, yellow, black and white.

A half century before this great ancient painter, between 500 and 400BC, Greek thought was influenced by the melancholic philosopher Heraclit. Not only a great pre-Socratic thinker, he was also an alchemist, and should be considered one of the most important sources to its origin.

One of the ideas he originated was the stage of four colors – the exact same colors Apelles would later use in his paintings; black, white, red and yellow.

Heraclit’s stages actually describe our existence, and form the basis of today’s most known and practiced religions. It represents human life, but also an alchemical examination of the sun’s appearance on earth, which we experience every nychthemeron – every single day. Heraclit rightly pointed out that there are few human beings who will ever experience the red phase, the peripetia – in their spiritual life.

After the discovery of alchemy, I turned back to the painting, Memorosa, with a clearer consciousness. I realized the image was both symbolically resonant as well as a realistic representation of the night unfolding.

The motif reveals a quickly darkening sky, in which the evening sun is nearly extinguished. The red twilight, the turning point, is manifested in the female figure, plunged to the ground by three men – who represent the night. The child symbolizes the vulnerable remaining rays of the sunlight. The moon, which represents the illumination in Heraclit’s model, lights the way through the darkness and reappears as the lantern brandished by one of the soldiers.

In Nerdrum’s paintings, the background often reflects the events of the foreground, which helps to create harmonia. But what’s more: the figures are equally a theatrically staged image, a transformed examination of what transpires in the sky. The drama proceeds from the three darkened men at upper right in the composition, down to the little child. With the upperhand, the night shadows, the blood red evening sun, soon disappearing behind the mountains.

After analyzing the painting, I concluded that Odd Nerdrum had painted the sunset and the night unfolding incarnate as human beings.

Christianity builds upon the same theme.

3500 years ago in Egypt, they worshiped the sun-god Horus, who battled eternally against the god of the underworld, Osiris. At dawn, Horus would out-match his opponent, sending him back to the underworld. Yet later in the evening, Osiris would return to reclaim the kingdom on earth which he embraced under his darkness. Today, it seems only the names of the two figures have changed: God and the devil.

But Odd Nerdrum’s painting describes a more nuanced and poetic depiction of this timeless struggle. He recreates the way of nature, which applies to every single masterpiece ever made, whether sung, written or illustrated. Man is seen from a heliocentric perspective; figures are swinging with the motion of the celestial spheres – no longer mere human beings, but manifestations of the cosmos.

Memorosa illuminates the moment when heaven and hell reunite, where fire meets ice, and the spirit melds together with the soul to form an alchemical alloy. It reminds us that we must remember the twilight. This brief, but beautiful moment, before the world is cloaked in darkness.

"My paintings are allegorical, but I expect each viewer will bring their own interpretation to a piece. The question one asks depends on the individual interpretation. If it’s a superficial read of literal abuse or abasement, then that is the subject being addressed within the viewer. If there is a more complex interpretation stemming from one’s life experiences, then the piece becomes personal, and asks questions the viewer is interested in answering."

"If only I had parented differently, if only I had been a better child, if only I had been more desirable, then the addict would never have chosen their addiction over me. The truth is that addiction is a complicated process that no other person can be responsible for, only the addict. To believe otherwise is at the heart of codependency."
~Andrew Nargolwala, psychotherapist

"I was a little surprised to hear so many people express that they perceive my pieces as being intentionally disturbing. Wanting to explore the workings of the unconscious tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They imagine death...I like to think of insects caught in amber."

"A poet looks at the world a little differently from others, and so does a scientist. I am very fortunate to be both. I find beauty in the cosmological consequences of dark matter, as much as I do in the written and spoken word. I appreciate the beauty in Heisenberg's principle as much as Matisse's economy of line. I'm probably one of the few poets in the world who literally dreams about tensor equations."
~Samuel Peralta, physicist and award-winning author of Sonata Vampirica

"Fantasy by definition is an escape, and it was a way for me to avoid difficult situations and emotions in my adolescence; however, I don’t think of reading as escapism. I think the activities of daily life are more commonly an escape from difficult or strong emotions. It’s in literature and art that one can usually come into more direct contact with those things. That’s why art is so fascinating. Even fantasy books, ironically."

"No one lives a bloodless existence. Everything that is repressed eventually finds a way out, even if it is only in the deepest of unremembered dreams. Though I’d rather it was with honesty, acceptance, a bold step, forgiveness and joy. Otherwise we tend to get all twisted up. Art, like love, does keep us alive; and, like love, it has the power to return us to our humanity when nothing else can."
~Interview with British poet, essayist, author, John Siddique

"This is like a kaleidoscope creating different images," says the artist of his work. "Like sounds flowing through the four windows, creating a stereo panorama, full of excitement and anxiety."
~Leo Bugaev, photographer, Russia

Many of the sights and sounds we’re subjected to in our society are harsh and disturbing. Psychologically and spiritually toxic. Scenes of cruelty, vindictiveness, ugliness and pettiness saturate the media and poison the mental atmosphere. I like the fact that I am sending out into the world images, pictures, little visions, that may do a tiny bit to counteract all that and communicate a sense of beauty, gentle humanity, grace, even holiness. It makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile in this sad, sad world.

One of the gifts of Aleah Chapin's body-of-work is the idea that true intimacy is achieved first and foremost by revealing oneself honestly. That through vulnerability we are able to deeply connect. One’s imperfections can actually make connection with others deeper, stronger. More real.

"When I make a photograph, it has the feeling of a miracle. Almost like a zen thing. The good pictures, I can’t take full credit for them. You don’t make a photograph so much as receive it. I wander around with my eyes open, and I’m just hoping for the best. Sometimes things that you’d never think would be special, you just hit upon, not fully understanding at the time why."
~Gary Briechle, photographer, Rockland, Maine

The former dockyard worker from Hiroshima decided that instead of creating one enduring piece to serve as metaphor for a love never-ending, he would construct a series of temporary installations meticulously fashioned from the painstakingly slow arrangement of so many tiny grains of salt.

"I was a little surprised to hear so many people express that they perceive my pieces as being intentionally disturbing. Wanting to explore the workings of the unconscious tends to make people feel uncomfortable. They imagine death...I like to think of insects caught in amber."